


No Star Is Lost

by SylvanWitch



Series: Biker 'Verse [2]
Category: Sons of Anarchy, Supernatural
Genre: AU, Apocalypse Crossover of Doom, M/M, Timestamp for Hells Angels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-06
Updated: 2012-07-06
Packaged: 2017-11-09 06:58:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/452621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvanWitch/pseuds/SylvanWitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a time-stamp for <i>Hells Angels Ain't Just a Rival MC</i> and immediately follows the final events of that story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Star Is Lost

Dean wakes to the blazing eye above and thinks, gratefully, _I’m in hell_.

 

The crushing disappointment of realization sets in when he hears footsteps and a familiar voice and realizes he’s looking at the sun shining directly overhead.

 

The burning furnace of the desert bakes him through the untouched skin of his back, and maybe it’s this distraction that momentarily counters the inferno of his chest.

 

The orange eye is eclipsed by a silhouette he thinks he knows—small head, long hair, slight form.

 

And then his flesh remembers and he screams.

 

*****

 

“You okay?”

 

It’s the first time in forty miles that the silence has been broken by someone other than Jimmy Page.

 

“Yeah.”

 

“You want to stop?” 

 

Dean cuts Jax a look, wonders if there’s more to the question.  “Why?  You think I need to?”

 

“I think you wouldn’t tell me if you did.”

 

Dean snorts, stares out the window on his side at the indefinite edges of the road where the desert has made impressive headway into reclaiming it.

 

They’ve known each other five days.

 

The third day they fucked.

 

The fourth day, Dean died.

 

The fifth day, eight months later, Jax came to get Dean back.

 

The biker shouldn’t know what he does about Dean, but then, it’s always been like this between them.

 

“I’m fine, _Dad_.” 

 

He catches Jax’s tight-jawed nod out of the corner of his eye and goes back to watching the long beige line of desert’s edge blur by.

 

Dean learned several things while he was separated from Jax.

 

He learned that third degree burns were almost identical in sensation to some of the things the demons had done to him in hell.

 

He learned that his brother’s screams in dreams were nearly indistinguishable whether he had his eyes open or closed.

 

And he learned that despite the constant pain, physical and otherwise, there was still room for the aching loneliness left behind when he realized Jax must hate him for what had happened to Gemma.

 

The third lesson was the one he’d never expected.  Learning it left him weak in brand new ways.

 

A little part of Dean blames Jax for that weakness. 

 

Which is stupid.

 

Sighing, Dean shifts so that he’s looking at Jax’s profile.  Jax drives like he does everything, with a deceptive swagger he manages even while seated.  He’s got one hand draped loosely over the top of the wheel, his left leg cocked up, his right stretched out to the pedal, posture relaxed.  He looks more like a ‘banger than the president of an outlaw motorcycle club.

 

But maybe knowing works both ways because Dean can see a tic at the corner of Jax’s eye behind his shades and can sense a tension in the way he’s holding himself still, like he’d be bouncing the free knee if it wouldn’t give him away.

 

“I’m sorry,” He offers gruffly, not really a concession.  “I’m just not used to…”  He trails off, trying to figure an end to the sentence that doesn’t make him sound pathetic. 

 

“Rising from the dead?” Jax offers.

 

Grateful for the attempt to lighten things up, Dean lets out a thin laugh and says, “You’d think the second time around would be easier.”

 

He sees the look Jax gives him, like he wants to ask Dean the hows and whys, sees, too, with another warm burst of gratitude, the moment Jax abandons that idea. 

 

Dean’s not ready to talk about it.  Not sure he’ll ever be.

 

“Probably a bitch of a learning curve,” Jax continues, eyes on the road but lip curled up in a little smile at the corner Dean can see.

 

“At least this time I didn’t have to dig out of my own grave.”

 

_Shit._

 

He hadn’t meant to say that.  Hadn’t meant to allude to the first time, hadn’t meant to talk about this last occasion of divine intervention, if that’s what you want to call the vicious irony of his survival for the past eight months.

 

But Jax doesn’t jump on the obvious follow-up.  Instead, he eases onto the shoulder in the shade of a billboard advertising a German performance vehicle.  The ubiquitous symbol is sullied by something black and viscous that it’s wiser not to try to identify, and the pithy slogan would probably make more sense if the second word wasn’t pixilated by automatic rifle fire.  But still, it provides some relief from the high desert sun.

Jax gets out without a word to Dean, makes a show of stretching in the open door until his white Sons tee-shirt and his cut ride up and a pale line of skin shows above his low-riding jeans.  Dean feels a stirring of something sinuous and hot in his core and licks his lips before working his way slowly out of the stiffness of long sitting and doing his own, more careful, stretching.

  
They stare at each other over the expanse of the Impala’s roof.  Heat waves shimmer up from the black surface, obscuring the view.  Dean tells himself it’s only this annoyance that makes him walk toward the front of the car and around the fender, where he meets Jax and stops, scant inches between them.

 

They’re about the same height, could see eye to eye if Jax’s weren’t covered in mirrored glass.  If Dean’s weren’t narrowed to a tight line of green glimmering between lashes.

 

Jax snorts, shakes his head, but doesn’t give, stares off over Dean’s left shoulder to the undifferentiated horizon behind him.  Dean resists the urge to turn around, sure there’s nothing out there to see.

 

“You’re still a stubborn son of a bitch,” Jax says, almost conversationally.

 

“You were expecting Mother Teresa?”

 

Jax smirks.  “Mother something.”

 

Dean laughs short and sharp but real, and shakes his head.  “Yeah, okay.  I’m a pain in the ass.  What else is new?”

 

“This,” Jax says, taking Dean by surprise when he touches the lumped pink scar tissue visible above the collar of his tee-shirt.

 

It takes everything Dean has not to shiver out from under that touch. 

 

Jax lingers, tracing the tissue, dipping his finger below the collar.  Dean can sense the movement through dead flesh but it comes only as the faintest pressure.  If he wasn’t watching Jax’s hand, he might not feel it at all.

 

Dean looks up with dread, expecting to find pity or horror, maybe both, on his lover’s face, masked by the shades, maybe, but inevitable.

  
Instead, he sees Jax’s eyes, sunglasses pulled off when Dean was distracted by Jax’s other hand.  The man’s gaze is a banked flame, steady and definite. 

 

This time, Dean can’t help the shiver.

 

Jax closes the slender gap of air between them, creating a new wave of heat as he meets Dean’s body from toes to hips to breast, the spot on the back of Dean’s neck blooming into fire with Jax’s hand cupping there and pulling Dean into the searing wetness of his kiss.

 

It’s the devouring kind, Jax’s tongue intimate and demanding, forcing Dean to resist the pull of Jax’s hand just to find room in it for himself, and when he plunges his tongue in a hard slide against Jax’s, he feels the responsive moan through their touching chests and through the convulsive clutch of Jax’s fingers at his nape.

 

The other hand reaches beneath the hem of Dean’s tee-shirt, and he’d protest, but Jax isn’t letting him back off, isn’t letting him loose from his nipping teeth and the ravages of his tongue.

 

Dean tastes metal in his mouth where his teeth have scraped his inner lip, tastes it at the same moment he feels Jax’s fingers slide between his confining clothes and the skin of his lower belly, untouched in both ways, neither fire nor desire having been there in too long to remember.

  
Dean aches, can’t keep back the groan, can’t stop this time from tearing away from Jax’s mouth to throw his head back, too far gone in the sensation of that hot, callused hand gripping his swollen cock to care that he’s bared his throat to Jax’s ferocious teeth.

 

Jax moves on the advantage, fastening his mouth around the apple and biting just enough to restrict Dean’s breath.  Dean gasps, groans, “Fuck,” and Jax’s hand speeds up, rough and hard, trapped in the restricted space he has, impatient and insistent.

 

Dean’s breath is thunder in his ears as Jax releases his throat long enough to growl, “Come on, come on,” wet words against the open skin of his neck, and then he fastens his teeth in a vice where Dean’s neck meets his shoulder.

 

He shouts, “God, fuck, Jax,” like a litany, and feels his knees weaken as his hips stutter involuntarily and he comes in his pants, the pungent odor rising on the heat between them and making him whimper on the exhaled breath of release.

 

Jax is no more gentle in pulling his wet hand out of Dean’s pants, though he keeps the other hand steady on Dean’s shoulder.

  
Dean’s swaying, can feel the movement of air against the wet skin on his neck, and despite the baking heat of the desert, he shivers, eyes vacant on the red dirt moonscape behind Jax, who says, “Dean,” to bring him back to himself long enough to notice Jax’s desperate condition.

 

The flush of skin at Jax’s throat invites a sucking kiss as Dean returns the intimate caress, happy that Jax wears baggy jeans for the room it gives him to wrap one hand around Jax’s hot, hard flesh and to reach around with the other to slide down the back of Jax’s pants and grip him there.

 

Jax grunts, “Fuck, yeah,” and braces himself with both hands on Dean’s shoulders as Dean begins the quick work of getting him off.  Jax isn’t shy about thrusting into Dean’s hand, isn’t quiet in guiding Dean with rough words, “Harder, fuck Dean, harder.  Yeah, god yeah, fuck,” when Dean rubs his palm over the wet head of Jax’s cock.  He’s finally reduced to broken grunts as Dean strips his cock with unforgiving strokes and he spurts a scorching trail of come against the thin skin of Dean’s wrist.

 

Jax rests his sweat-damp forehead against Dean’s shoulder for an instant, and Dean can feel the gust of damp breath against his tee-shirt when Jax says, “Should have listened to my mother.”

 

Dean stiffens under Jax’s touch and Jax looks at Dean from inches away with a sad smile.  “She always told me to bring a change of underwear whenever I take a road trip.”

 

Dean thinks his own smile is also sad, hopes it doesn’t show the way fear has driven a spike into his chest that he can feel down to his belly.

 

“Gemma isn’t your fault, Dean, and she’d be insulted to think you were taking credit for her stubbornness.  No man on earth ever made my mother do anything she hadn’t already set her mind to.”

 

Dean nods, lump in his throat preventing an immediate response, but when he can speak again, he says, “I’m sorry.”

 

“You’ve said that already.  Nothing to be sorry for.  So quit apologizing.”  Jax’s voice is rough with emotion, and Dean nods, feeling a welling in his chest that replaces the fear with hope he’d rather not have.

 

He doesn’t trust the feeling, and he breathes it out of him.

 

“We should get back on the road,” Dean suggests gruffly.  “I assume we’re staying at the Shepherd’s Church in Barstow on the way back.”

 

“Yeah.  It’ll be like old times.” 

 

The filthy smile Jax throws him as he turns away has Dean grinning back, mouth wide like a wolf’s with remembering the last time they stayed overnight in a church.  Not much sleeping got done.

 

“Let’s go,” Dean urges, sliding as quickly as his bad leg will let him into the passenger seat.

 

Jax’s answer is to start the Impala and pull out onto the empty road fast enough to raise a rooster-tail of sand in their wake.

 

*****

 

For days, there are voices in the wind, barely there, almost audible, like he could understand them if only he could concentrate on anything but the spiraling agony of his wounds.

 

Sometimes he thinks he’s going mad, until the moment a cold canine nose on his cheek pries his eyes open enough to see that he’s in a room and there are people moving around him.

 

It’s an effort to see much beyond the blurred edges of figures, and once he’s ascertained that they aren’t demons—he thinks—Dean doesn’t care to work any harder.  He slips gratefully beneath the drowning wave of unnatural sleep, vaguely aware that he should be alarmed and equally cognizant that he doesn’t care what might come to kill him while he’s unconscious.

 

The voices chant, something foreign, smooth with ancient syllables, and Dean stirs in his sleep, restless with whatever it is their words might mean, unsure if he should come up out of the depths long enough to ask.

 

The lulling melody drives him down again, though, and he doesn’t resist.  He hopes the voices don’t come.  Hopes they let him die.  He’s tired.

 

The next time, the voice is saying only one word, repeating it in varying tones until he has to acknowledge it.

 

“Dean.”

 

“Dean.”

 

“Dean!”

 

He levers one eye open, expecting searing light to pierce the ball and leave him blind.  Instead, he sees only the muted, dust-addled afternoon air and Sari sitting at the kitchen table a few feet from his convalescent’s cot.  Cindy is lying at her feet, eyes on Dean’s face, tail thumping hopefully.

 

“’bout time, lazybones.  Get up.  You have visitors.”

 

Dean’s not sure if his face can contort enough to express his incredulity.  From her disdainful snort, he guesses she sees what he means, anyway.

 

“You aren’t going to get any better lying there like that.  Get up.  It’ll do you good.”

 

He wants to say, “Fuck you.”

 

He wants to say, “Leave me alone.”

 

He wants to say, “Let me die.”

 

Instead, he releases a groaning sigh and manages to get his elbows under him, after which point, strong hands help him upright, though he hisses through the pain of it.  His bare feet meet the cool earth of the hut floor, and he finds it feels good.

 

He’s surprised to discover movement doesn’t hurt as much as he expected, and he manages to clear the grit from his throat enough to say, “How long?”

 

“Twelve days, give or take.”

 

He grunts and notices that the hands that helped him upright are attached to sinewy, strong brown wrists.  He follows the arm upward to impressive biceps and broad shoulders, up a long column of throat to a sharp jaw and slanted cheekbones, deep brown eyes, a cascade of black hair.

 

“This is Coyote Runs at Night.  You can call him Bill.”

 

Dean nods a greeting.  Bill’s face doesn’t change at all.  He could be carved from stone.

 

“Thanks,” he tries, and Bill nods and holds out a hand.  Before he’d killed his brother, died saving the world, and risen in shrieking pain from the dead, Dean would never have taken the hand of a stranger held out in help.

 

Pride isn’t the last thing he discovers he’s lost.

 

When he’s upright, Bill moves toward the door, not dragging Dean, exactly, but not pausing enough for his pained shuffle to falter into a halt, either.

 

Outside, an aluminum lawn chair, faded aqua plastic stripes sagging in the seat, awaits him in the shade of the house.

 

He eases into it gratefully, trying not to put too much pressure on Bill’s arm as he does so.  The Hopi nods again at Dean’s second thanks and disappears around the side of the adobe hut that Sari calls home.

 

Then a young woman appears, as if Bill had ducked out of sight to shift skins.

 

“Hey,” Dean says, startled.  The woman nods wordlessly, approaches him, crouches to leave at his feet a tiny leather bundle, and then rises gracefully and walks away around the far side of the hut.

 

“Uh, Sari?” Dean calls.

  
“They’re paying you homage.  Just be polite,” the woman says, not bothering to come to the door to speak to him directly.

 

As if in some pre-ordained order, then, a little boy appears, dark eyes wide and solemn.  He leaves a little carved figure at Dean’s feet and also goes away, skipping as he rounds the corner in his haste to be out of Dean’s sight.

 

Next is an old woman, shaking hands bearing something wrapped in a faded blue kitchen towel.  From the sweet odor rising from the bundle, he thinks it must be cornbread. 

 

Again, he gets nothing for his words of thanks except a nod.

 

An old man is next, bearing a tobacco pouch.

 

Then a man perhaps twice Bill’s age, big around the middle, who offers a clay pipe.

 

And so it goes, for a long, long while, until the pile at his feet starts to spread in an impressive half-moon around him.

 

“Sari?” Dean calls at one point, dry-throated, and the old woman appears only long enough to hand him a tall plastic cup full of icy cold water, which he downs rapidly and regrets immediately as his empty stomach protests with sharp pangs.

 

He thinks about finding the cornbread in the heap at his feet and thinks twice when bending at the waist makes his breath come tight and shallow with the pain of it.

 

At last, when the procession seems to have ended, Bill reappears, offering his arm again, which Dean takes.  He’s exhausted from simply sitting still, and he discovers he has enough pride left, anyway, to be embarrassed.  His cheeks are flushed with shame when the Hopi man helps him down onto the cot again.

 

He thinks about asking Sari to pick up the gifts, but before he can formulate the words, the world around him tilts crazily and he’s forced to close his eyes and lie back on the cot.  That’s the last thing he does for a long while.

 

*****

 

The yard is full of people.

 

That’s Dean’s first impression.

 

In fact, it’s just the sweetbutts, plus a couple of unfamiliar female faces, and the usual crew with the addition of one big guy Dean doesn’t recognize.

 

But given the amount of time he spent with Sari and Cindy and no one else, Dean feels a little overwhelmed.

 

He levers himself carefully out of the car, cursing not only the weakness in his left leg but also the deep ache in his ass that serves to remind him, rather inconveniently given the public nature of their current circumstance, of last night’s marathon under the altar in Barstow’s sanctuary church.

 

Jax grins like he knows why Dean’s limp is a little worse, and Dean mutters, “Payback’s a bitch,” which only makes Jax snort.

 

Opie is first to them, offering Dean a handshake, eyes assessing as he takes in what he can see of Dean’s scarring and the way Dean walks carefully, favoring his left leg, hand tight on the knob of his carved wooden cane.

 

He hates that he has to use it, but it reminds him of Bill, who’d given it to Dean a month after his resurrection, saying he’d need it since Bill couldn’t be around all the time to help him up.

 

Because he and the Hopi had come to a kind of quiet understanding, Dean had known the man wasn’t being insolent or unkind, and he’d appreciated the gift more than he’d been able to say.

 

Ope reminds him of Bill in size only.  The comparison ends when he takes in the judgment in Opie’s face.

 

After that, he’s mobbed by Chibs and Juice, Bobby and Piney, and finally the kid, Half-Sack, whose grin is huge and abashed, like he’s thrilled to see Dean and a little embarrassed by the feeling, too.

 

Everyone offers a back-slap, a half-embrace, the way men congratulate each other after a rough game, and then it’s on to J.C. and Rita and Kerry, who approach him in a group, hesitant, like he’s a wolf to their herd of sheep.  The two women he doesn’t know hang back, eyes speculating.

 

As soon as the three girls are close enough, it’s like whatever they feared has vanished, replaced by a squealing, fragrant flurry of limbs and damp kisses.  He actually loses his balance, grateful for Jax’s hand between his shoulder blades and his laughing voice over his left shoulder saying, “Easy, girls, it’s been a long trip.  Stand back and let the man breathe.”

 

They subside in a chattering wave toward the open door of the clubhouse, where the party is apparently already under way.  Music blares indistinctly from the darkness, and the bikers’ voices pick up in volume to compensate.

 

Jax stops Dean with a hand on his arm.  “You okay with this?  We can beg off, do the partying later.”

 

Dean shrugs.  “It’s fine.”

 

“You sure?”

 

His first instinct is to bark, but Dean lets out a breath instead and shakes his head.  “Gotta do it sometime, man.  Might as well be now.”

 

“They’re happy to have you back,” Jax notes, moving ahead of Dean into the gloom of the hallway leading into the bar area and common room.

 

“Yeah,” Dean says quietly, only half believing it.

 

Eventually, Dean’s able to settle in at a table near the bar, where there’s a shadow cast by the bar itself and under a fixture with a blown bulb.  He’s happy to sit there and watch Chibs and Sack at the pool table, Juice leaning against the wall nearby with an eye to the winner, Bobby and Piney arguing at the bar a few feet away, Ope and Jax with their heads bent over a map, deep in considering some plan or other.  The new guy, whose name is Teague, chats up Kerry at the bar.

 

J.C. surprises him once, actually making him jump when she sidles up behind him and offers a beer over his shoulder.  “Sorry,” she whispers damply into his ear.  He can smell the whiskey on her breath, and when he turns his head, he sees a tendril of hair pressed to her cheek and has to resist the sudden and ridiculous urge to cry.

 

He’s back home, and it’s just too damned much all at once.

 

She pats him on the shoulder, maybe seeing in his face that he can’t thank her for the beer or her kindness, retreats to the bar.

 

He waits until there’s a raucous burst of noise from the boys at the table, the usual trash-talking after a win, to push his chair back and struggle to his feet, using the cane more than he usually has to, suddenly drained of every ounce of energy.

 

Congratulating himself on a clean getaway, he makes it almost to the door of Jax’s room, where he’d changed into clean boxers earlier, before he hears the man himself say, “Hey,” softly, like he’s unsure of his welcome.

 

Dean looks up to find Jax back-lit by the lights over the bar, face unreadable in the shadows.

 

“Hey,” Dean answers, not sure what’s expected here himself.

 

“You want to get out of here?”

 

“Yeah,” Dean says, not meaning it to sound as heartfelt as it comes out.

 

“There’s the back door,” he offers, and Dean falls in just behind Jax, making better time than he’d expected for the way his knee is acting up.  Relief is motivating.

 

For all he’s anxious to put the noise and company behind him, he has to pause at the shrine to Jax’s father, which he sees is now joined by a smaller, more intimate collection of things that must have been Gemma’s.  He feels Jax come back to him, standing close enough that the point of their shoulders brush.

 

“This is nice,” Dean says, not knowing what to say.

  
“She’d have liked it,” Jax acknowledges, picking up the framed photo of Gemma and his dad. 

 

“They look happy.”  He says it with a certain sadness, thinking of his own family, of the picture he still has of the four of them, taken scant weeks before their lives came apart forever.

“They were,” Jax says.  Then, as though hearing himself for the first time, “They are.”

 

Dean wonders but says nothing, his faith too far tested to have any firm answers on the afterlife.

 

Jax sets the picture down and bumps Dean with his shoulder.  “C’mon, before someone needs me for something.”  Jax pulls a walkie-talkie from his belt, shuts it off, and leaves it near the rear tire of his father’s bike.  “They can live without me for a few minutes,” he adds, already turning toward the rear exit.

 

Dean considers a comeback about being king of the world but decides against it and trails after Jax, listening to the sounds of revelry fading out behind them as the door eases closed and then to the way Jax’s rolling stride makes the gravel move under his feet.

 

It’s a clear, starry night, the moon a sliver low in the sky, but under the big security lights on the lot he can appreciate Jax’s graceful motion, the way he strolls like he owns the place—which he does—and like the world, too, must answer, which maybe it does, also.  Dean’s not clear on the chain of command yet, hasn’t got a clue how it’s all supposed to work.

 

He misses for an instant the easy, restrained simplicity of life with Sari and Cindy, but when he weighs the quiet life against watching Jax’s ass in denim, Dean has to give credit where it’s due.  He’s happy enough to be here.

 

Jax is waiting by the Impala, watching Dean with an unveiled look that makes his mouth dry and his heartbeat quicken.  He takes his time, tries not to lean too heavily on the cane, and wonders again how it’s possible that this man in front of him can look at him like that at all, given the image he presents:  half-lame, scarred up, broken down.

 

Nothing alters in Jax’s look, though, as Dean nears him, and he counts himself lucky and decides to stop thinking about it.

 

 _Get over yourself_ , he admonishes, and then goes around the trunk of the Impala to slide into his seat.  He’s still getting used to riding shotgun.

 

“You’re quiet,” Jax observes neutrally as they pull out onto the street and head toward the east side of town.

 

Dean shrugs, leather on leather making a rustling noise that suffices for answer.

 

“There are going to be more tomorrow.”

 

It’s not a threat but a warning, and Dean nods tightly.  “Yeah.”

 

“People think you’re a savior.  You’re going to have to get used to the attention.”

 

“Bullshit.  I just did what I had to.”

 

Jax’s snort is eloquent.  “You can play humble all you want, but you’re a legend, man, and you’re going to have to live like one, at least for awhile.”  He gives it a beat or two to sink in and then adds, “People need that.”

 

Dean sighs audibly and turns the radio on, drowning out the ominous and constant static by pushing the tape in with one sharp jab.

  
Fogerty reminds them that someday they’ll understand, which Dean doubts, watching the occasional lit window for signs of life, thinking about how there are people here trying to rebuild, start the world over, maybe even have kids.

 

He shudders and slides down a little in the seat, turning his eyes away from the yellow-eyed houses, afraid in an instant for what it means that man has survived, what his part in it has been, will be.

 

Jax takes them in a circuitous, winding route through city streets half-lit by houses with generators, down blocks with no light at all, lifeless and eerie, across town by a main route, the businesses closed, some of them boarded up, others with a single night-light burning in a back room indicating that they’ll be open again tomorrow.

 

They end up in an empty field behind a big corrugated steel building that Jax identifies quietly as having once belonged to the highway department.

 

The Impala rocks to a stop in the tall grass ten yards or so from the building, which blocks whatever meager light the town may throw off.

 

It’s dark. 

 

They open their doors at the same time, get out, close them.  The sound echoes from the building, reverberating over the low hills that rise behind the tree-line a quarter of a mile away.

 

Dean can hear water running somewhere, the slow burble of a stream by the sounds of it, and there are crickets in the tall grass.

 

Jax leans against front of the car, feet out in front of him, head canted upward to take in the sky, and Dean mimics him, likewise staring at the vast expanse of velvet dark broken by brilliant smatterings of stars.

 

If he were more poetic, he might compare it to something, but as it is, Dean can only think how much it looks like someone spilled rhinestones on the deep indigo of the dark.  Like maybe God has a late-model Elvis fetish.

 

He keeps the ridiculous idea to himself and just stares, grateful to be away from the crowd of people who were celebrating in his honor. 

 

*****

 

Many nights, Dean doesn’t sleep at all, just listens for a time to Sari’s even breathing, to Cindy’s snuffle-mouthed snore, and then rises and slides into his boots and walks out under the night sky. 

 

The lightning-blasted tree that takes up Sari’s tiny side yard is one of his favorite places to sit.  Maybe it’s some lizard-brained leftover needing cover from the dark or a strange metaphor for the way he sees things now, but the tree brings Dean comfort or at least makes the night go more quickly.

 

The arroyo walls hem him in, looming, the sentinel crows along its rim mostly quiet except for the occasional breath of fanning wings or a choked-off caw as one finds something in the dark to talk about.

Otherwise, he’s alone with the distant coyote voices.

 

Most nights.

 

He remembers the night Bill appeared from around the front of the hut, walking silently in the preternatural fluidity of the Hopi, and came to crouch beside Dean where he made his usual seat on the wide, dead hammock of a downed tree limb.

 

Bill hadn’t said anything for a long time, apparently content to watch the sky.  Once in awhile, a meteor streaked across their nearer view and flamed out.  Bill had that quality of stillness of the kind that made Dean almost forget the big man was there except for the heat of his skin close enough to sense.

 

It stirred nothing in the hollow place where Dean had once felt desire.

 

But then, that’s not why Bill had come.

 

Eventually, the Hopi had shifted his head so that he was looking at Dean in profile and then raised a hand to point at a constellation of seven stars.

 

“Those are Chuhukon, where my people came from.  We return to the gathered stars when we die to join again with our ancestors.  We have survived the end of the world three times.  Those of us who went down into the kiva come up again to rebuild the world.  The ones who sacrifice themselves to save the people live always in Chuhukon and watch over us, waiting for us to return to them.”

 

Without another word, Bill had risen from his crouch, his broad shoulders eclipsing almost the whole of the night sky.  He was close enough that Dean could smell the day’s heat still trapped in his clothes and hair.  But he did not touch Dean.  Instead, he made a motion of his hand over Dean’s head that Dean could not make out in the dim light.  And then, as quickly and silently as he’d come, Bill disappeared once more.

 

Wet-cheeked, Dean had stared at the seven shining stars until they’d sunk from his view, and still he’d waited like the rising of the sun would bring him something else, maybe a promise that he could go on living despite the impossible distance between himself and his brother.

 

Maybe just relief from the crushing loneliness that gripped him and left him empty.

 

Of course, the sun had brought with it only heat and a stirring from the nearby hut that told him Sari would need water from the well.

 

He had arisen wearily to begin another day, feeling older than his years by ages, and went to bring in water.

 

*****

 

A brighter star flames to life beside him, and Dean turns his head to see Jax lighting a joint.  Soon after, the star banked to a minute glow, he smells the sweet relief of smoke and doesn’t hesitate to take the offered joint and suck in a lungful himself.

 

Maybe it’s the weed or the quiet or how tired he is, but Dean feels something loosen inside of himself, a warm feeling expanding in his chest and his belly.

 

Still, he surprises himself when he says, “The Hopi believe they come from the stars and return to them after they die.”  Before he can recover his usual reserve, he’s raising a hand to outline the seven stars Bill had once pointed out to him.  “They say the souls of the dead who died fighting the good fight go there and wait for their friends and family to come to them.”

 

He can feel Jax’s eyes on him and turns to look his lover, who has an expression on his face Dean can’t quite identify.  Love and hope and probably fear.  There’s plenty of the last to counter the first two.

 

Jax’s voice is tight with the slow release of smoke when he says, “My dad told me the stars were the souls of all the dead who went out fighting.  They burn in the sky for the ones who are left behind. He said they were the home fires the angels kept burning for eternity.”

 

Dean gives him a speaking look.  “Your dad always talk like that?”

 

Jax snorts, “You read his book.”

 

Dean nods.  “It’s a nice idea, though.  Might mean…”

 

He leaves off.

 

Jax hesitates and then points at a bright star low on the eastern horizon.

 

“That’s my mom.  That kinda reddish one.  That’s Gemma.”

 

Dean squints.  “Dude, I’m pretty sure that’s Mars.”

 

Jax leans into him, shoving with his shoulder.  “Shut up.”

 

Dean looks away for a long minute, trying to master the sudden and crushing grief he’s never gotten used to.  Then, he points to a familiar, bright star. 

 

“That’s Bobby.” 

 

Jax says, “Why?”

 

“It’s Sirius.”  As if this explains anything.

  
“The dog star,” Dean says after a second of confused silence.  “Bobby loved his dogs.”

 

Jax nods, sucks in a lungful of sweet smoke, hands the spliff to Dean.  “And Sam?”  He asks softly.

 

Dean shakes his head, then, gives the joint back to Jax unsmoked.  His throat is closed, and he’s having trouble breathing at all.

 

At last, though, his lover’s eyes steady on him with an understanding that threatens to take him apart, Dean whispers, “Not a star in the sky bright enough for my brother.”

 

Somewhere from over the hill behind which the stars are beginning to set, a lone coyote howls. 

 

It should be the loneliest sound in the world, Dean thinks.  But with Jax close beside him and the bright stars overhead, Dean feels for the first time in forever an answering fire inside himself.


End file.
